To us death is not, as others imagine, a complete dissolution of being. It is, rather, the separation of two parts which had been linked together. It brings the soul into what for us is an invisible realm where it, in the loss of the body, becomes formless. And the body is hidden in earth and undergoes a change from its corporeal shape and is withdrawn from its human appearance.
--St Dionysius the Areopagite, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 2.7
